"Cujo" Review

"Cujo"

Directed by Lewis Teague
Starring Dee Wallace, Danny Pintauro, Daniel Hugh Kelly, Christopher Stone, Ed Lauter

RATING
5/10

So, I just watched a movie about a rabid zombie St. Bernard dog that tears people to shreds. Sure as hell blows "Beethoven" out of the water. As a gigantic horror fan, one can only come across the film "Cujo" on film boards once every... ten minutes. Some regard it as a classic, others are lukewarm to it, and then there are those who consider it a shameful mess. It was a long while before I finally decided to give this odd tale a watch. Unlike the second group who were lukewarm, I didn't think there would be any middle ground. Either this would be terrible or great, no exceptions. Well, my deepest apologies to the second group... this was every bit as middling as they warned me. Is it terrible? Well, not really. A masterpiece? Very far from it.

 

"Cujo" is about a happy little family living in the generic suburbs who run into a bump in their marriage when the wife, Donna, becomes a cheating whore and sleeps around with the local, uninspired jock despite her loving husband and her wonderful son building solid relationships (see? Immediately we don't give a shit about her... She's a terrible person). Then, when the husband discovers her sleeping around, he decides to head out to a business conference for two weeks. Meanwhile, the wife and kid decide to pay visit to a relatives farmhouse, only to discover that they have run out of petrol... and are being hunted by a huge rabid St. Bernard dog who was bitten by a radioactive bat. So essentially what you have here is "127 Hours", only James Franco is being patronized by a zombie mutt.

 

Now I'll start with a few things I was impressed with. "Cujo" is able to capture that feeling of complete helplessness and puts you in the crisis the mother and child are facing quite well.

It knows how to walk the line between keeping you on edge and giving you imagery that will provide endless nightmares for a kid. Since this is based on a Stephen King novel, you can expect plenty of vivid and strange occurences, especially the odd mindset most of the characters seem to have. It actually makes it feel so unreal, that you simply take it as a dose of reality and what could possibly happen when these characters make decisions. But that's where the flimsy side of it starts to show too. The character of the mother, Donna, is unlikable and cold. She separates herself frequently from her family in the beginning to fool around with the scruffy jock. She acts like a confused high school teen, and not a responsible mother. So when the time comes when she is locked in the car with her son... you only really care about the son's safety. I was rooting for Cujo to rip her to shreds, honestly. As the lead protagonist, you just don't care about her. Even her attempts to show "affection" for her child while on the verge of death seems like a forced plea. Apart from the films characters, the whole aesthetic felt cheap. I'm still amazed at how they got the dog to go through some of those tricks, but it it doesn't help that the film has the production quality of a TV soap opera in the early 80's. And once the ending rolls around, you can't help but frown at its not-so-subtle and abrupt climax.

 

"Cujo" is a mixed bag for me. As an oldie in the horror genre, I can respect its style and ambition to a certain extent, but keep in mind that 1983 was a year after John Carpenter's "The Thing" shook the genre to its core. There's no excuse for a lesser direction to go in, and unfortunately "Cujo" is aimless for the most part. What could've been a brilliantly executed tale of terror and claustrophobia was undone by poorly concieved characters and weak production value. All in all, it's a mediocre film that doesn't break new ground, but certainly gives a new spin to the meaning "rabid zombie dog"... uh, that's never been said before, actually...